Last week, Google announced that it plans to remove support for the H.264 video codec from its browsers, in favor of the WebM codec that they recently made free. Since then, there's been a lot of discussion about how this change will affect the Web going forward, as HTML5 standards like the tag mature.

Shortly before announcing its decision to remove H.264 support for HTML5 video from Chrome, Google's codec developers submitted an I-D of its VP8 Data Format and Decoding Guide to the IETF with a request for comments. The document provides a detailed description of the bitstream format and the decoding mechanism used for the VP8 video codec.

Google has added an experimental branch to the VP8 code tree, encouraging developers to begin work on the next incarnation of its newly open sourced video codec.

On May 19, Google unveiled something that many in the open source community had been expecting (and which the Free Software Foundation asked for in March): it made the VP8 video codec available to the public under a royalty-free, open source BSD-style license.

From today, users will be able to download and install free software to play and encode the new WebM format. WebM is based on the Matroska container format -- replacing Ogg -- and the VP8 video codec which replaces Theora. Crucially, the Vorbis audio codec is part of the new WebM specification.

The Xiph.Org Foundation is pleased to announce its support of the WebM open media project as a project launch partner. As announced earlier today at the Google I/O Developer Conference, the WebM format combines the VP8 video codec, the Matroska container, and the Vorbis audio codec developed by the Xiph into a high-quality, open, unencumbered format for video delivery on the Web.

The announcement of Google's new WebM video format and release of the VP8 video codec as an open standard have been hailed by some as the move that will free the Web from the proprietary H.264 codec widely used for online video today and favored by Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft (MSFT).

As you probably know, a Google I/O conference was held today and a lot of blogs said they will announce big things. And big it was: Google officially announced the release of an open source, royalty-free video format called WebM which will be using the VP8 codec Google aquired from On2 as well as Vorbis audio.

The WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) initiative enables the web community to further support the WebM Project. Google, Matroska and the Xiph.Org Foundation make the various components of WebM openly available on royalty-free terms. By joining the CCL, member organizations likewise agree to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL.